I trust you.
What does that really mean?
From my perspective, it is about my opinion of you, which is a series of judgements based on assumptions that culminate in me making a decision; that my conclusions are correct and I can accurately predict your behaviour. Therefore, if you do something that lays outside of my expectations of how I think you will react, it breaks my trust. You didn't break my trust, rather my predictive model of your behaviour was flawed and incorrect, so it broke. You are not to blame, I am.
Trust no one?
None of us trust anyone else, but ourselves.
We might think that we trust others, but it all invariably comes down to us trusting that our predictive model is correct. We trust ourselves, even when we have had it proven to us time and again that we aren't very good at judging the behaviours of others. But, what else can we do?
Trust is sometimes confused with hope, because often enough we have no choice but to "trust" that some person or group is going to do right by us. This is essentially where we are with politicians and governments, because we all know that none of them can truly be trusted, but we hope that whoever is there making decisions is going to support good outcomes for us. Yet, how often have our hopes been met, and how often have they been dashed on the rocks and carried lifeless out to sea?
Do you trust your government?
I don't just mean the one that is in power now, I mean the government. A lot of energy is spent arguing over which party or coalition is in power, but ultimately it doesn't matter, because the system itself can't be trusted. Some are less corrupt than others, but they are all corrupt because none of them put 100% of their effort into doing what is best for citizens. None of them. It doesn't matter who is Prime Minister or President, who is taking care of foreign affairs, or healthcare, no matter how "good" someone is, the system is inherently corrupt.
Which cancer do you want to die from?
It is interesting that so much energy is put into fighting over which party is better or worse, with essentially no discussion about the system itself. The system therefore is governed by those in power who benefit from the system working for them and keeping them in power. Not just in power as a particular person in a particular position like President, but in power as a system.
The government is essentially the OS of our lives and dictates what we are able to do, how easily we can do it, and whether we benefit or not. And most of the time, it is dysfunctional and crashing, because that is how it has been designed. It is a system where all the hardware and the software it runs is in constant conflict, stealing resources in the background, and shutting down processes we need to run our lives.
Constant blue screens.
Do you trust in the system?
It is pretty obvious I don't, but the thing is that it doesn't matter what I believe, because even though democracy is fundamentally broken, it still benefits from as long as enough support it, it will keep on being the broken system of choice. It is the same with "money" right? The value is in the belief it can be used to trade with, so people keep on using it. With a government, the belief is that there is no other way to govern a large group of unknown people in any other way than how it is now. Is that really the case?
No.
But we believe it to be.
If we survive the cataclysmic event that is likely due to our inability to work together on betterment instead of competing for control, then perhaps we will look back at this period of time and laugh at how ridiculous and how stupid we were to believe in the systems we trust today. And that is a big if, because with the momentum we have and the trajectory we are heading, we are unlikely to ever get to a point to look back, because there will be no one left to reflect.
Do you trust that tomorrow will be better than today?
Will you be better tomorrow?
Taraz
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